A Matter of Importance Part 4

When the squad s.h.i.+p came out of overdrive and he was awakened by the unpleasantness of breakout, he yawned. He looked on without comment as Patrolman Willis matter-of-factly performed the tricky task of determining the ecliptic while a solar system's sun was little more than a first-magnitude star. It was wholly improbable that anything like Huk patrol s.h.i.+ps would be out so far. It was even more improbable that any kind of detection devices would be in operation. Any approaching s.h.i.+p could travel several times as fast as any signal.

Patrolman Willis searched painstakingly. He found a planet which was a mere frozen lump of matter in vastness. It was white from a layer of frozen gases piled upon its more solid core. He made observations.

"I can find it again, sir, to meet the _Aldeb_. Orders, sir?"

"Orders?" demanded Sergeant Madden. "What? Oh. Head in toward the sun.

The Huks'll be on Planet Three or Four, most likely. And that's where they'll have the _Cerberus_."

The squad s.h.i.+p continued sunward while Patrolman Willis continued his observations. A star-picture along the ecliptic. An hour's run on interplanetary drive--no overdrive field in use. Another picture. The two prints had only to be compared with a blinker for planets to stick out like sore thumbs, as contrasted with stars that showed no parallax.

Sirene I--the innermost planet--was plainly close to a transit. II was away on the far side of its...o...b..t. III was also on the far side. IV was in quadrature. There was the usual gap where V should have been. VI--it didn't matter. They'd pa.s.sed VIII a little while since, a ball of stone with a frigid gas-ice covering.

Patrolman Willis worked painstakingly with amplifiers on what oddments could be picked up in s.p.a.ce.

"It's Four, sir," he reported unnecessarily, because the sergeant had watched as he worked. "They've got detectors out. I could just barely pick up the pulses. But by the time they've been reflected back they'll be away below thermal noise-volume. I don't think even multiples could pick 'em out. I'm saying, sir, that I don't think they can detect us at this distance."

Sergeant Madden grunted.

"D'you think we came this far not to be noticed?" he asked. But he was not peevish. Rather, he seemed more thoroughly awake than he'd been since the squad s.h.i.+p left the Precinct substation back on Varenga IV. He rubbed his hands a little and stood up. "Hold it a minute, Willis."

He went back to the auxiliary-equipment locker. He returned to his seat beside Patrolman Willis. He opened the breech of the ejector-tube beside his chair.

"You've had street-fighting training," he said almost affably, "at the Police Academy. And siege-of-criminals courses too, eh?" He did not wait for an answer. "It's historic," he observed, "that since time began cops've been stickin' out hats for crooks to shoot at, and that crooks've been shooting, thinking there were heads in 'em."

He put a small object in the ejector tube, poked it to proper seating, and settled himself comfortably, again.

"Can you make it to about a quarter-million miles of Four," he asked cheerfully, "in one hop?"

Patrolman Willis set up the hop-timer. Sergeant Madden was pleased that he aimed the squad s.h.i.+p not exactly at the minute disk which was Planet IV of this system. It was prudence against the possibility of an error in the reading of distance.

"Ever use a marker, Willis?"

Patrolman Willis said: "No, sir."

Before he'd finished saying it the squad s.h.i.+p had hopped into overdrive and out again.

Sergeant Madden approved of the job. His son Timmy couldn't have done better. Here was Planet IV before them, a little off to one side, as was proper. They had run no risk of hitting in overdrive.

The distance was just about a quarter-million miles, if Krishnamurti's Law predicting the size and distance of planets in a sol-type system was reliable. The world was green and had icecaps. There should always be, in a system of this kind, at least one oxygen-planet with a nearly-terran-normal range of temperature. That usually meant green plants and an ocean or two. There wasn't quite as much sea as usual, on this planet, and therefore there were some extensive yellow areas that must be desert. But it was a good, habitable world. Anybody whose home it was would defend it fiercely.

"Hm-m-m," said Sergeant Madden. He took the ejector-tube lanyard in his hand. He computed mentally. About a quarter-million miles, say. A second and a half to alarm, down below. Five seconds more to verification.

Another five to believe it. Not less than twenty altogether to report and get authority to fire. The Huks were a fighting race and presumably organized, so they'd have a chain of command and decisions would be made at the top. Army stuff, or navy. Not like the cops, where everybody knew both the immediate and final purposes of any operation in progress, and could act without waiting for orders.

It should be not less than thirty seconds before a firing key made contact down below. As a matter of history, years ago the Huks had used eighty-gravity rockets with tracking-heads and bust-bombs on them. These Huks would hardly be behind the others in equipment. And back then, too, Huks kept their rocket missiles out in orbit where they could flare into eighty-gee acceleration without wasting time getting out to where an enemy was. In their struggle against the cops two generations ago the Huks had had to learn that fighting wasn't all drama and heroics. The cops had taken the glamour out when they won. So the Huks wouldn't waste time making fine gestures now. The squad s.h.i.+p had appeared off their planet. It had not transmitted a code identification-signal the instant it came out of overdrive. The Huks were hiding from the cops, so they'd shoot.

"Hop on past," commanded Sergeant Madden, "the instant I jerk the ejector lanyard. Don't fool around. Over the pole will do."

Patrolman Willis set the hop-timer. Twenty seconds. Twenty-two. Three.

Four.

"Hop!" said Sergeant Madden. As he spoke, he jerked the lanyard.

Before the syllable was finished, Patrolman Willis pressed hard on the overdrive b.u.t.ton. There came the always-nauseating sensation of going into overdrive combined with the even more unpleasant sensation of coming out of it. The squad s.h.i.+p was somewhere else.

A vast, curving whiteness hung catercornered in the sky. It was the planet's icecap, upside down. Patrolman Willis had possibly cut it a trifle too fine.

"Right," said the sergeant comfortably. "Now swing about to go back and meet the _Aldeb_. But wait."

The stars and the monstrous white bowl reeled in their positions as the s.h.i.+p turned. Sergeant Madden felt that he could spare seconds, here. He ignored the polar regions of Sirene IV, hanging upside down to rearward from the squad s.h.i.+p. Even a planetary alarm wouldn't get polar-area observers set to fire in much less than forty seconds, and there'd have to be some lag in response to instrument reports. It wouldn't be as if trouble had been antic.i.p.ated at just this time.

The squad s.h.i.+p steadied. Sergeant Madden looked with pleasurable antic.i.p.ation back to where the s.h.i.+p had come out of overdrive and lingered for twenty-four seconds. Willis had moved the squad s.h.i.+p from that position, but the sergeant had left a subst.i.tute. The small object he'd dropped from the ejector tube now swelled and writhed and struggled. In pure emptiness, a shape of metal foil inflated itself. It was surprisingly large--almost the size of the squad s.h.i.+p. But in emptiness the fraction of a cubic inch of normal-pressure gas would inflate a foil bag against no resistance at all. This flimsy shape even jerked into motion. Released gas poured out its back. There was no resistance to acceleration save ma.s.s, which was negligible.

A sudden swirling cloud of vapor appeared where the squad s.h.i.+p's subst.i.tute went mindlessly on its way. The vapor rushed toward the s.p.a.ce-marker.

A star appeared. It was a strictly temporary star, but even from a quarter-million-mile distance it was incredibly bright. It was a bomb, blasting a metal-foil flimsy which the electronic brain of a missile-rocket could only perceive as an unidentified and hence enemy object. Bomb and rocket and flimsy metal foil turned together to radioactive metal vapor.

Sergeant Madden knew professional admiration.

"Thirty-four seconds!" he said approvingly.

The Huks could not have expected the appearance of an enemy just here and now. It was the first such appearance in all the planet's history.

They certainly looked for no consequences of the seizure of the _Cerberus_, carefully managed as that had been. So to detonate a bomb against an unexpected inimical object within thirty-four seconds after its appearance was very good work indeed.

"Hm-m-m," said Sergeant Madden, "we've nothing more to do right now, Willis. We'll go back to that hunk of ice you spotted comin' in, and wait for the _Aldeb_."

Patrolman Willis obediently set the hop-timer and swung the squad s.h.i.+p to a proper aiming. He pressed the overdrive b.u.t.ton.

His manner, like that of Sergeant Madden, was the manner of someone conducting a perfectly routine operation.

"If my son Timmy were with me on this job," said Sergeant Madden, "I'd point out the inner meaning of the way we're going about handling it."

He reposed in his bucket-seat in the squad s.h.i.+p, which at that moment lay aground not quite right-side-up close to the north pole of Sirene VIII. The local sun was not in view. The squad s.h.i.+p's ports opened upon the incredible brilliance of the galaxy as seen out of atmosphere. There was no atmosphere here. It was all frozen. But there was a horizon, and the light of the stars showed the miniature jungle of gas crystals.

Frozen gases--frozen to gas-ice--they were feathery. They were lacy.

They were infinitely delicate. They were frost in three dimensions.

"Yes, sir," said Patrolman Willis.

"The _Aldeb_'s due soon," said Sergeant Madden, "so I'll make it short.

The whole thing is that we are cops, and the Huks are soldiers. Which means that they're after feeling important--after glamour. Every one of 'em figures it's necessary to be important. He craves it."

Patrolman Willis listened. He had a proximity detector out, which would pick up any radiation caused by the cutting of magnetic lines of force by any object. It made very tiny whining noises from time to time. If anything from a Huk missile rocket to the salvage s.h.i.+p _Aldeb_ approached, however, the sound would be distinctive.

"Now that," said Sergeant Madden, "is the same thing that makes delinks.

A delink tries to matter in the world he lives in. It's a small world, with only him and his close pals in it. So he struts before his pals. He don't realize that anybody but him and his pals are human. See?"

"I know!" said Patrolman Willis with an edge to his voice. "Last month a couple of delinks set a ground-truck running downhill, and jumped off it, and--"